The Commission of the European Communities and the State Science and
Technology Com- mission of the People's Republic of China agreed in
spring 1987 to establish a Sino- European biotechnology centre. One
activity of the centre concerns the organisation of joint scientific
workshops in the fields of agriculture and medicine. After a frrst
workshop on medicine held in Shanghai in October 1987, the Sino-European
Soil Science Workshop, held in Guangzhou from 26 April -I May 1988, was
the second one, this time devoted to a particularly important aspect of
agriculture -soil science. The South China Agricultural University on
behalf of the Sino-European Biotechnol- ogy Centre was responsible for
the local organisation of the Workshop; the European con- tributions
were organised by the_Commission. Soil Science is of particular
importance to China in view of the fact that only about 10% of the whole
country is arable land. Careful soil conservation is therefore a subject
of high priority. A solid knowledge and understanding of the
characteristics and functioning of the soils is a pre-requisite for
their conservation and the very broad European expertise in temperate as
well as tropical and sub-tropical climatic zones could well contribute
to the efforts of Chinese soil scientists to modernise their
methodologies and classification. This contribution, however, could not
be envisaged as a unilateral technical assistance. Indeed, the only
promising way to come to a real contribution is through joint research
involving Chinese as well as European scientists.
